


Breaking

by Stayawhile



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post Reichenbach, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 08:35:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/607882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stayawhile/pseuds/Stayawhile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“John,” she says, and stops herself just before the words, “are you okay?” slip from her mouth.  Clearly, he isn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breaking

Breaking

 

There’s a banging noise. At first it sounds like explosions, a war zone, but as she swims upward though the viscous syrup of sleep, it resolves into knocking on her door, in loud, slow, rhythmic, repeated blows that sound like a fist.

“Christ, what now,” she mutters, pulling on her chenille robe and glancing at the clock. Nearly half four, and she’s been sleeping badly for weeks, since—well. Since.

“Coming!” she yells, giving up on the hunt for her slippers. She puts on the chain before she opens the door, because you never know, but when she sees who it is, she undoes the chain and opens the door as rapidly as she can. The man on the other side is clearly on the verge of collapse. She steers him to the sofa, and he sits down heavily between Toby and her collection of throw pillows. Toby, rudely awakened, jumps down and stalks toward her bedroom, and Molly takes his place.

“John,” she says, and stops herself just before the words, “are you okay?” slip from her mouth. Clearly, he isn’t. He’s shaking now, and she pulls the blanket her Nan knitted for her from the back of the sofa and tucks it around him, pulling him close. The shaking increases, and she realizes he is weeping on her shoulder, the choked sobs of a man who is trying not to cry, and failing. 

She holds him, stroking his back, until the shaking stops. 

He lifts his head, and she pulls back to grab a tissue from the box next to the sofa. She’s been watching a lot of sad movies lately. He wipes his eyes, snuffles, and when his eyes meet hers the mixture of sadness and shame in them actually makes her stomach hurt.

“I’m sorry,” he says softly. “I know it’s late, I just didn’t—I couldn’t—”

“It’s all right, John,” she whispers. “You can always come to me.” She hates herself. She’s not someone he should be looking to for comfort, she’s another person who betrayed him. But that means she owes him anything he asks for, anything he needs that she can give. 

Being British gives her place to start. “How about a cup of tea? Maybe with a shot of whisky in, it’ll do you some good?” she asks. He nods, sitting up a little straighter, pulling the blanket around him as she heads into the kitchen. Her attention is divided between the kettle and John, but every time she glances over, he is sitting up very straight, unmoving, staring straight ahead into nothing. She puts some honey in with the tea and whiskey for good measure; crying like that will make your throat hurt, she knows.

She sets the cup in front of him. "Thank you, Molly,” he says, and drinks, never looking at her. Even under the residue of a good hard cry, his face says he hasn’t slept much either. Since.

They sit in silence for a few moments. Her flat is on a side street, and London is quiet at this hour. “Tell me,” she murmurs, wondering if he will, if he can.

“I can’t do this,” John begins. His voice doesn’t sound like him. “Molly, I’ve just spent the last two hours with the barrel of a gun in my mouth. I couldn’t make up my mind whether to pull the trigger.” He looks at her then, a wry twist to his mouth. “I came close.” 

“Oh, John.” We did this to him, she thinks. I did this. The overhead light is harsh. She’d flipped on the switch by the door when she got up, and now she wishes she’d turned on the little lamp in the corner, she could have done that when she made the tea, but now it seems impossible, or impermissible, to move. “Where is the gun now?” She has to know. She has to keep him safe.

“At 221B. On Sherlock’s bed.” He shakes his head. “I took the clip out. I couldn’t stay, so I went out and started walking, and I wound up here.” 

“I’m glad you did,” she offers. He drinks more tea, then sets the cup down. 

He stares for a bit, and she lets him. She won’t insult him with platitudes. Finally he speaks again. “I don’t know how to do this. I don’t understand why—” She waits.

“I don’t understand why he couldn’t trust me. Why he pushed me away, sent me off on a fool’s errand at the end, why he didn’t trust me to help him. What he said to me—he never—I thought I was different.” He takes a deep breath, and when he speaks again his voice is bitter and sharp. “I thought he considered me a friend. And in the end I was just another idiot, just another fucking useful idiot.”

No, Molly thinks, you’re so wrong, so very wrong, and knowledge twists like a knife in her gut. It’s the same knife that twists in him, only in reverse. His hurt comes from he believing it’s true, that Sherlock never cared. 

The light behind her windows is slowly turning from black to gray. For a moment, Molly allows herself to hate Sherlock, for what he’s done to both of them. Stupid bastard, always thinks he knows everything. Stupidest damn genius in the world.

The words are out before she knows she is going to say them. “You loved him.”

John is looking at his hands. He’s twisting them in his lap, holding hard enough that his knuckles stand out whitely, as if by holding them tight enough he can hold himself together. “Yeah, I did.” His voice is a little louder now, a little steadier. “At least he never knew. That would have been, well. I suppose it might have amused him.”

He turns to her, the blanket slipping off his shoulders. “We weren’t lovers, Molly. It was never anything like that, and people kept making assumptions, making jokes, but we were never more than friends.” He pauses, dropping his hands back in his lap. “Maybe less.” 

She takes John’s hands in her own. They’re cold. “I understand,” she tells him, though she realizes as she says it that she really, really doesn’t. “Sherlock was…” She has no idea how to finish that sentence. 

John nods, slowly. “Sorry, Molly. I know you—cared about him too.” Leaning back, he lets out a sigh, pulling his hands away. “I shouldn’t have dumped all this on you. You don’t deserve it.” He rubs a hand over his chin, and Molly notices that he hasn’t shaved in a few days, that his hair looks unwashed and greasy. “I should go.”

“And do what?” Molly asks. He shouldn’t go back to 221B. For one thing, the gun is still there, lying on Sherlock’s bed, lying in wait. She is afraid for John, and the guilt will destroy her if he…and there’s another sentence she can’t finish, not even in her head.

“I don’t know,” he replies. “I don’t know how to keep going, I don’t know _why_ to keep going. You tell me. What should I do, Molly Hooper? What the fucking hell do I do now?” His voice has risen with each word. He’s still not even close to okay.

She has to find something to say. “Right now? You should take a shower, and then you should sleep. And you should do both of those here.” She wants to sound firm and motherly, hoping that sheer exhaustion will make him listen. She has to protect him. She promised.

John gives a weak smile. “Right. I suppose I must be a bit ripe by now. Jesus, I’ve kept you up all night, it’s near morning, isn’t it.” The windows are a pale gray now, and there’s more traffic. “Do you have to work today?” He stands up. They both pretend not to notice that he sways a bit as he does, as he pulls on the costume of strong, reliable Doctor John Watson. 

“No, it’s Saturday. I’m off. The bathroom is through there, and there’s clean towels on the top shelf. Oh, and if you want to shave, there’s a fresh pack of disposables somewhere, although I’m sorry, they’re pink.” She points the way, and John gives her a swift, unexpected hug before he heads toward the bath. 

She doesn’t deserve it, she knows. She hears the loo flush, the whine of water through old pipes, the shower coming on, and she’s hit with a wave of self-loathing, the likes of which she hasn’t felt since she was fifteen. Molly paces in her small flat, and she loathes that too, looking around at the untidiness, clothes and papers and mugs scattered among the pastel colors and floral upholstery. No strong colors, just pale, pathetic—she’s a weak person, a weak pastel floral damned rabbit of a person, and she lets people push her into doing things that she doesn’t want, that she can’t handle. 

Clean sheets. At the very least, John should sleep in a bed freshly made up in clean sheets, and so she goes into her bedroom and grabs the duvet and pulls it off the bed in one swift angry jerk. She kicks her slippers under the bed, even though her feet are cold, because she doesn’t deserve comfort. Everything is wrong, and she doesn’t know how to make it right.

By the time John emerges, barefoot in his jeans and unbuttoned shirt, she is sitting on the sofa, lost in thought. This is where she sat while Sherlock paced back and forth, his words tumbling over themselves. 

_You have to do this for me, Molly, please. He can’t know, he won’t be safe, and that’s all that matters, he has to be safe, he can’t die._

_Isn’t there another way? Sherlock, there has to be. You’re supposed to be a genius, you have to come up with something, some way out of this._

_No, Molly. There are dozens of better plans, yes, but there’s no time. I’ve been a fool and he’s backed me into a corner. Please, Molly._

_All right, I’ll help you. But you have to tell him._

_No. NO. If he knows he’ll get himself killed, and then I may as well die for real. This way, there’s a chance. There’s just a chance we might both survive this, and then we—Please, Molly, promise me. Promise me you won’t tell him. Promise._

She’d never managed to say no to him before, and now there was desperation on his face and his eyes, and her voice shook as she promised to help him, promised to risk her job and her career for him, and promised, finally, never to tell John the truth.

“I’ve made up the bed for you,” she says. “Just go lie down and rest for a while. You’ll be able to think a bit better once you’ve rested. Just—let me help.”

He shrugs, a hopeless little motion. He’s trying, she thinks, trying to make her believe that she is helping, that he’s better that he was when he pounded on her door, but the vast sadness in his eyes tells the truth. He turns his back, walks into her bedroom and closes the door.

Damn you, Sherlock Holmes, Molly thinks. Damn you. 

 

She putters around a bit, washing the tea mugs, putting books back on shelves. Fortunately, the basket of clean laundry is still waiting to be folded, so she doesn’t have to sneak into her room for clothes and risk waking John. She spends a long time in the shower, leaving the water somewhat colder than she prefers. Another useless penance. She makes some toast, though she isn’t hungry at all.

She thinks about things like loyalty, and love, and promises. She always hoped Sherlock would notice her, even though she knew he wasn’t something she could have, and if she ever had him, he could never have been what she wanted. He was something impossible to aspire to, cold and remote and glamourous and exciting and unreachable, like the moon. And then John Watson had waltzed in, and he and Sherlock had instantly been close, Sherlock had needed John, trusted him. Not like Molly.

But Sherlock had come to her, instead of John. He had come to her, laid this damned enormous burden on her, and buggered off. The weight of it was breaking her, and John was breaking too, right in front of her eyes. She needed to make sure someone got rid of that gun. The image of John holding it, the barrel in his mouth, tears in his eyes, is vivid and terrifying and won’t go away.

A promise is an abstract thing, she decides. When it’s broken, it doesn’t weep. It doesn’t bleed. 

 

John emerges from her bedroom a few hours later. She’s got a pan of soup on the stove. It’s only tinned stuff, but she’s added some vegetables and a few spices, the way her Nan used to do. 

He’s rubbing his eyes, and she hopes that means he actually slept. “Oh, you’re up,” she says, mentally wincing at being so stupidly obvious. “Want some soup?”

He nods, and she puts two bowls on the table and carefully fills them, gets a box of saltines from the cupboard. John sits, goes still, and Molly decides to start eating hoping he’ll join in just to be polite. It works, and they finish their soup in silence.

“That was good. I didn’t think I was hungry, but I suppose I was,” John says. “Thank you, Molly.”

“It was only tinned,” she says, but she’s pleased. He looks and sounds a bit more like himself, although she still plans to call Greg Lestrade and have him confiscate that gun. “You slept a bit?” 

“Surprisingly, yes.” He stands up, carries his plate and spoon to the sink. “I think I’ve imposed on you long enough. You’ve been very kind.” 

Under the table, Molly digs a fingernail into the heel of her hand. “Don’t go yet, John.”

He smiles, sadly. “It’s all right, Molly. Really.” The costume—brave, stalwart Doctor Watson—is back in place. 

“No.” She stands. “Come sit down. There’s something I have to tell you.”

He shrugs, again, and follows her to the couch, his expression a polite mask. Molly turns to face him, one hand reaching out to rub the neatly folded blanket, its familiar texture a small comfort. She takes a deep breath.

“Sherlock is alive,” she says.

She isn’t sure what she expected, but is still surprised when he says, “Christ, Molly, not you too.” His tone is angry.

“What do you mean?”

John lets out an exasperated sigh. “I got a letter, yesterday from some New-Agey twat, telling me that she could feel Sherlock’s spirit, protecting the city, and the angels had told her that as long as Sherlock wasn’t forgotten, he could never die. I wanted to strangle her. Still do, as a matter of fact. So don’t you go there, Molly Hooper, because I cannot listen to one more word of that crap.” 

“That’s not what I meant,” she says. He looks at her blankly, and she summons the will to go on. “Sherlock faked his death. I know because I helped him.”

His face pales, then goes red. “You’re serious.” She nods. “He’s alive, and you knew about it.” Another nod. “And you didn’t tell me. He let me think he was dead, and you lied to me about it.” His tone is grim, redolent of pain and fury. “God damn you to hell. And god damn Sherlock bloody fucking Holmes, too.”

His fists are clenched and she tries not to be afraid, although she knows he has killed people. “He made me promise not to tell you, John. He begged me to help him. He did it for you.”

He glares, and his voice makes her think of brightly lit interrogations as he says, “Explain.”

She does. She tells him how Sherlock came to her, about Moriarty’s snipers, about the truck with the piles of laundry in it and the people recruited from the homeless network, kitted out in lab coats, about the bag of blood and the ball clutched in his armpit to stop his pulse. She is crying by the end of it, and John’s face is turned away, his body tense.

“Very clever,” he finally says. “And he made me watch. He made me that bloody phone call, and he made me stand there and watch him jump off a bloody building.” He shakes his head. “That’s the cruelest thing I’ve ever heard. I always thought he was just careless with people’s feelings, but that is genuinely cruel.”

“He cared for you,” Molly whispers. “He said if you got killed—”

“Shut up. Just shut your mouth.” He interrupts, whirling to face her. “He put me through this, this agony, because he cared?” His voice is rising in volume. “And you’re as bad as he is, you just said, yes, Sherlock, fine, Sherlock, anything you want and the hell with John, the hell with your supposed best friend, he doesn’t matter!” 

She wants to run away from the anger that suffuses his face and his voice, but she won’t. She won’t. “He said if you knew, you’d get yourself killed, and then he might as well really be dead. He said this way there was a chance, for both of you.” Her voice is steady, but John turns away again, walks to the window, and she sees his shoulders start to shake. “That’s when I knew he loved you. That’s why I said yes. He was desperate, and he begged me to help him save your life, and I said yes.” 

He won’t turn toward her, but there are tears in his voice as he says, “You have no idea how much I want to believe you.” 

“Then believe me, please, because I am telling you the truth. I’m breaking my promise to Sherlock and telling you the truth and you have to believe me, please.”

She watches him, his figure silhouetted against the sheer curtains. His head is bowed, his shoulders slumped. She waits and watches and sees him slowly straighten, his spine unfurling, his head up, shoulders back, and remembers that he was a soldier, before she knew him. She watches him swipe a hand across his face, and when he turns around he isn’t the broken man who came to her door in the middle of the night.

“Can you forgive me?” she asks. 

“What’s done is done,” he replies. “You’re going to help me find him.” It isn’t a question, because they both know the answer was never going to be anything but yes. 

After all, she promised Sherlock to keep him safe.


End file.
